Srinagar, July 16 -- Baasim Fayaz Khan

A few years ago, sitting with a book for an hour felt completely normal. Now, ten minutes without checking my phone feels like a challenge. One notification turns into opening Instagram, then reels, then replies, and somehow an entire hour is gone. I am not saying this to be dramatic. This is just what my afternoons look like, and I think a lot of students here would say the same.The research is hard to ignore. Dr. Gloria Mark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, has spent over two decades studying how people focus. In 2004, the average person could concentrate on a task for about two and a half minutes. By 2012, it had dropped to 75 seconds. Today, her research puts it at around 47...